BETHLEHEM POLICE GET ALLY IN WAR ON DRUNKEN DRIVING

Bethlehem Police Sgt. William Cooke remembers the days when policemen would pick up an intoxicated person outside a bar and take him safely home.

"Society would not accept that now," he said earlier this week as he sat before the department's newest intoxication testing equipment.

Today, when a Bethlehem police officer observes someone he thinks is driving under the influence of alcohol, he arrests him at the scene. Unless he is injured, the arrested person is taken back to the station for sobriety tests.

One of those tests involves breathing into the department's new Intoximeter 3000. It replaced the city's old Breathalyzer, which was taken out of service last March when its accuracy was questioned.

Until the new machine was in place, Bethlehem police took their suspects to the state police barracks to use testing equipment there, or to a hospital for blood tests.

The Intoximeter is available to "any surrounding community" that wants to send someone to be trained on it; Bethlehem won't supply the personnel to run the machine for anyone else.

The department made the same offer with its former Breathalyzer, and many departments that had their own machines sent people to train in Bethlehem. This time, Cooke said, other communities do not have the equipment, and only those who intend to use Bethlehem's are sending people to be trained. So far, Fountain Hill, Lehigh Township and Freemansburg have done so.

With the help of a state grant, Bethlehem purchased three Intoximeters, one for the actual testing and two for training, which began in September. Cooke said the new machine is more accurate and easier to use. It includes a keyboard where the arresting officer can, in minutes, type in all the necessary information about the person he wishes to test. The machine provides a printout and keeps a record of the data, including the person's blood- alcohol level.

The machine is supposed to eliminate measurement errors in the testing of a suspect's breath. Before and after testing the breath of the suspect, the machine tests a standard solution of known alcohol content to determine if the suspect's breath was accurately measured for alcohol content.

"There will always be something better," Cooke said of the various testing machines, noting that some states are still using the old Breathalyzer. He predicted that "sooner or later (the new machine) will be challenged, probably when some politician gets arrested."

In the meantime, the Bethlehem department is looking at other ways to supplement its drunken driving arrest procedure.

An officer makes an arrest for driving under the influence (DUI) based on what he observes at the scene, without the aid of any chemical testing, Cooke explained. "Sobriety field tests" are performed at the scene, with suspects asked to perform tasks like walking a straight line and standing on one leg.

The suspect is then taken to the station, where he is fingerprinted, photographed, and observed for 20 minutes while the arresting officer completes the proper paperwork. During this time, the suspect may not drink, eat or smoke. The breath test operator gets the machine ready, and the suspect is explained the procedure and informed that refusal to submit to the test will result in an automatic one-year suspension of his driver's license.

Cooke said the department has a new videotape machine, and he would like to see it used "as soon as a suspect walks through the door," and continue running throughout the procedure.

Videotape training will soon be done in conjunction with training for field sobriety testing and a course on "recognizing the DUI performance," Cooke said.

Eventually, he added, the video machine could be used for other things, such as taping accident and crime scenes. He said a videotape of a scene would be more effective than police drawings, still pictures and verbal descriptions.

Right now, he said, the plan is for the machine to be used "in house," though, and along with DUI cases, he would like to see it used for interviews and interrogations.

Cooke said one point against videotaping is the cost, not only of the equipment but of the extra personnel required to run it. Nevertheless, he predicted it will become the "standard tool" of larger departments as equipment becomes cheaper.

"Poorer quality" equipment had previously been used for surveillance on a drug case, but Cooke said the tape was thrown out of court. Although such a videotape has never been used as evidence in a hearing in this area, Cooke said the recentdiscussion about using a video camera at proposed "central booking stations" in Northampton County leads him to believe the tapes may soon be admissible.

Northampton County District Attorney Donald Corriere recently outlined a proposal to set up two central booking stations for suspected drunken drivers. Cooke said the Bethlehem department "would expect to be involved . . . . We would like to be a central booking station."

Getting a printout of the tests done in the past two weeks, Cooke reported that eight people had been tested on the machine, with four refusing. He said the department tests an average of three suspected DUIs per month.

The state says a person is legally drunk if the alcohol level in his blood is 0.1 percent or more. A person who gets a reading under 0.1 can still be charged with "being incapable of safe driving," Cooke said. If the suspect registers below .05 on the machine, the officer would have to have "a lot of evidence" to get a conviction, he said. The arresting officer will probably request a blood or urine test for a person who really seems intoxicated but registers a low blood-alcohol level.

The urine test is helpful in determining if the suspect is under the influence of something other than alcohol.

The Bethlehem department has a 90-95 percent conviction rate on those people arrested for DUI, Cooke said. The department does not have a policy of "waiting outside bars" or setting up roadblocks, he explained. Instead, "if we see something that would make us believe something is wrong with the operator, we go after him."

The average reading of the people they bring in is 0.18, which he said is the national average for drunken drivers. This is nearly twice the legal limit, he pointed out. "We're not arresting individuals who have stopped after work for a few beers, or had a long lunch - three martinis instead of two. We're arresting people who are definitely under the influence of alcohol.

"We're taking the individuals off the road. But we're missing a lot, too," Cooke said. "There are a lot of people driving around that shouldn't. You can never totally prevent it."